5 ms·

It would be interesting to get a guesstimate for the licensing costs of all this.

jeswin 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the software is very heavily discounted, given that it's a very high-visibility public website frequented by people who make technical decisions.
pjc50 7y ago
The number of production nodes appears to be small - less than 10?
nikanj 7y ago
Around a dozen servers at https://stackexchange.com/performance https://stackexchange.com/performance . Around $1k for Windows per machine, around $5k per SQL * 4 servers. All in all, well under $50k in licensing costs. Basically a rounding error, if you compare to something like AWS billing for a website of the same scale.
- BrentOzar 7y ago
  > around $5k per SQL * 4 servers. I wish. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition (which is required if you want to use over 128GB RAM for caching data, or servers with over 24 cores) costs approx $7,000 per CPU core.
  - nikanj 7y ago
    Yikes! For contrast, Buffer burns through $20k per month in managed hosting ( https://open.buffer.com/transparent-pricing-buffer/ https://open.buffer.com/transparent-pricing-buffer/ ). Running a site at scale is an expensive ordeal
    - romanovcode 7y ago
      What does this SAAS has anything to do with MS server pricing
      - nikanj 7y ago
        It gives perspective on how expensive running a company on the internet is, from a hosting-and-servers perspective. MS server pricing is steep, but the cost of licensing over the useful lifetime of a SQL server is not a big cost factor.
- winrid 7y ago
  I wonder what they are using websockets for? I haven't seen push notifications on SO.
  - deanward81 7y ago
    We use websockets for pushing things like comments, answers and question edits as they are added as well as for notifications like inbox messages and reputation updates. Our websocket process currently has ~500k concurrent connections across 9 web servers. Nick has some information on his blog (https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/#websockets-httpsgithubcomstackexchangenetgain https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...) although it’s a little outdated - we no longer use Netgain, we use the .NET Core websockets bits instead.
    - winrid 7y ago
      Thanks!
- zen_mike_eu 7y ago
  What about CAL licenses? :))
  - p_l 7y ago
    Don't need them for SQL server hosts, you need them for AD (one per user) or login connections (other than admin).

I wouldn't be surprised if the software is very heavily discounted, given that it's a very high-visibility public website frequented by people who make technical decisions.

pjc50 7y ago

The number of production nodes appears to be small - less than 10?

nikanj 7y ago

Around a dozen servers at https://stackexchange.com/performance https://stackexchange.com/performance . Around $1k for Windows per machine, around $5k per SQL * 4 servers. All in all, well under $50k in licensing costs. Basically a rounding error, if you compare to something like AWS billing for a website of the same scale.

BrentOzar 7y ago
> around $5k per SQL * 4 servers. I wish. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition (which is required if you want to use over 128GB RAM for caching data, or servers with over 24 cores) costs approx $7,000 per CPU core.
- nikanj 7y ago
  Yikes! For contrast, Buffer burns through $20k per month in managed hosting ( https://open.buffer.com/transparent-pricing-buffer/ https://open.buffer.com/transparent-pricing-buffer/ ). Running a site at scale is an expensive ordeal
  - romanovcode 7y ago
    What does this SAAS has anything to do with MS server pricing
    - nikanj 7y ago
      It gives perspective on how expensive running a company on the internet is, from a hosting-and-servers perspective. MS server pricing is steep, but the cost of licensing over the useful lifetime of a SQL server is not a big cost factor.
winrid 7y ago
I wonder what they are using websockets for? I haven't seen push notifications on SO.
- deanward81 7y ago
  We use websockets for pushing things like comments, answers and question edits as they are added as well as for notifications like inbox messages and reputation updates. Our websocket process currently has ~500k concurrent connections across 9 web servers. Nick has some information on his blog (https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/#websockets-httpsgithubcomstackexchangenetgain https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...) although it’s a little outdated - we no longer use Netgain, we use the .NET Core websockets bits instead.
  - winrid 7y ago
    Thanks!
zen_mike_eu 7y ago
What about CAL licenses? :))
- p_l 7y ago
  Don't need them for SQL server hosts, you need them for AD (one per user) or login connections (other than admin).